SonnblickObservatory
The highest permanently staffed weather station on Earth. This page is the climb: scroll lifts you from Kolm-Saigurn to 3,106 m.
Below the fog
In winter, high pressure parks cold air in the valleys. A cold pool fills the troughs below while the summit stands in sunshine above the deck.
The deck
Austrians call it a laboratory above the clouds. On inversion days the numbers kept up there are simply not the valley's numbers.
Built 1886
Climatologist Julius von Hann and Gastein researcher Ignaz Rojacher raised the station for roughly 5,700 Gulden. It opened on 2 September 1886 and has kept its series ever since.
Warm south wind
Air crossing the main Alpine ridge descends dry and warm on the north side. Föhn events push summit temperatures up and change the light to gold.
In a whiteout
Austria's lowest normally measured temperature belongs to this summit: −37.4 °C, on 1 January 1905. The snowpack reached 11.9 m on 9 May 1944. The cable car is rated for winds to 80 km/h.
Never dark for long
Two ZAMG technicians live on the summit in 14-day shifts. In more than 130 years the station has gone unattended for exactly four days.
The ledger
The longest uninterrupted mountain climate record in the world. Annual mean temperature at the summit: −5.4 °C for 1971–2000, −5.1 °C for 1981–2010, −4.6 °C for 1991–2020.